Character Clues

Character Analysis

Clothing

Hey, they say that clothes make the man. What to wear plays a big part in how each character interacts with others. Idabel isn't even allowed into Miss Roberta's place because she refuses to dress like a girl "[…] March now…and don't come back till you put on some decent female clothes," (1.1.97) says Miss Roberta. Florabel is an awful person but, because she looks the part of a southern belle, is everyone's favorite twin.

Randolph, on the other hand, is always dressed in kimonos:

Over his pyjamas he wore a seersucker kimono with butterfly sleeves, and his plumpish feet were encased in a pair of tooled-leather sandals: his exposed toenails had a manicured gloss. (1.4.59)

He likes to dress in fancy women's clothes and look out his window. Clothing is a way to escape gender roles in the novel, but in the small town of Noon's Landing gender bending comes at a high cost.

Actions

While most of the characters give off a prim and proper vibe (like Miss Amy with her ladylike steps) their actions reveal deep violence that seems to be potentially present at any moment. The first thing that Miss Amy, for example, does in the novel is kill a bird with an iron poker:

Miss Amy pursed her lips, and took five rapid, lilting, ladylike steps…

The poker caught the bird across the back, and pinioned it for the fraction of a moment [...] (1.2.4-5)

Another action that bubbles up from nowhere is when Joel kisses Idabel when it doesn't even seem like he knows he has feelings for her. Idabel in turn attacks him, fighting him until he bleeds, which reveals her own capacity for violence.

Speech and Dialogue

A big marker of race and class in the novel is speech. The white characters at Skully's Landing all speak in a fairly elevated register. Check out Randolph's hoity-toity language:

"Over there […] is a five-pound volume listing every town and hamlet on the globe." (2.8.35)

Zoo, on the other hand, is written in dialect:

"Uh uh. You Mama die in the sick bed. Mister Randolph say so." (1.2.94)

These speech patterns highlight the racial divide—and the resulting class divide—that was oh so prevalent in Truman Capote's boyhood South.